


My Body Is A Furnace

by UnregisteredCookie



Category: Hollow Knight (Video Games)
Genre: Cataclysmic Event, Constructive Criticism Welcome, Fallen kingdom - Freeform, Grimm Is Not In For A Nice Time, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Like You Have To Really Squint Implied, Maybe I'll Make More Of This But Hmm, Minor Original Character(s), Origin Story, Original Character Death(s), Original Character(s), haven't written anything in a while
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-31
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:55:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23410564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnregisteredCookie/pseuds/UnregisteredCookie
Summary: The first kingdom he saw was brought to ruin by the hand of a blazing scarlet fire.Perhaps it was a bad idea, then, to devour the very same thing that destroyed his home.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 29





	My Body Is A Furnace

**Author's Note:**

> I've not written anything in a good, long while, and it's been a long time since I've gotten genuinely excited and enthralled in something that I've written. A part of me even wants to make this into a series of sorts--exploring how Grimm became a troupe master, how he discovered the whole process of death and rebirth to live eternal... maybe. We'll have to see.
> 
> I've been sitting on this for a few days, maybe a week, debating if I should even post it.
> 
> But, well. Hollow Knight doesn't really have much in the way of fanfiction. So I may as well. Enjoy!

A black soul and a shallow heart paved its way among the idle roads of Gloamsmont long ago. The earth above us shattered with a vicious roar as a monster fell to our cavernous depths, and from those depths the red Wyrm clawed her way out, oozing and bleeding, some ghastly and squamous thing. A creature so vast, so godly and massive to have crashed into our mountain was swiftly gifted the essence of godhood up until it died. When the Red Queen emerged from its maw, the heathens passed it down to her.

The mountain became home to a hollowing cavern of gold and steel, iron forged from the might of fire and hammers. Godless heathens we were upon her arrival, and it was only in the glowing radiance of her glory that we were given the freedom of thought and free will. I suppose such is the way of all Wyrms, easing the clinical depression of bugs’ minds with an ache for existence. How hollow their minds must have been until we were gifted a hallowed soul to love and be loved by. She styled herself our Mother, temperamental and vain. We had no frame of reference to recognize the signs of dictatorship.

On the night upon which I was conceived, our Mother and my father met in a glowing void. He said that she was beautiful and radiant, but like all things, the memory of the particularities over time faded blissfully away. Upon the hatching of my egg, I was promptly carted away to my father’s home and left upon his doorstep like something unimportant. I still don’t understand her reasoning--perhaps it was her idea of a joke. Perhaps she’d originally desired an heir and changed her mind at some point before my egg cracked. Perhaps they made a deal and I was some sort of bargaining chip. I’m most inclined to believe I was intended an heir--but then, who would crave the son of a common laborer as the heir to a mighty throne?

She told us that we were the only kingdom to exist. Looking now upon the runes of Hallownest, of Witherspeak, of the Kingdom of Brick, this isolation seems a common theme among Wyrms and their kingdoms now. We believed her, and even believed that she had created the very earth that we breathed. We basked in the darkness in the centre of our mountain, coated in a light provided only by the fire and sunlight streaming through the cracks in the stone and the hallowed light from the hole that Mother carved. She enslaved our minds and our wills, we who had no frame of reference to build upon, no Gods yet to worship, no civilization or society before her glamorous arrival. 

She told us we were alone--the only civilization that existed--that the world beyond our mountain was bleak and empty and mindless. And whenever we paid respects to the hole in our mountain, gazing out into the remainder of the world, all that we saw was a vast and empty plain, cold wind flowing into Gloamsmont from a great and voided beyond, bringing with it a terrifying unknown that we couldn’t even begin to comprehend. Mother was a secluded breed of Wyrm, aggressive in our privacy and insistent that none shall leave for our own protection. And if there ever were a bug that lived beyond our walls, they were not of her making, and they were promptly disposed of.

When the walls of her kingdom were assaulted by some fierce deity--some creature unheard and godlike in its own right--we didn’t know what to do.

It was an invasion of mind and will--an infestation enslaving the conscious mind and lulling them into a wakeless slumber. The Red Queen fought against this force mightily and eagerly, spitting fire and brimstone that burnt and scorched the kingdom--by the end of it all, all that remained was the husk of her kingdom, brought to ruin by her own desperation. The walls were left scorched and charred, and a heavy layer of choking dust settled upon everything. Anything flammable burned, anyone caught in the flash of fire solidified cruelly into figures that stole their very faces into stone. Records were destroyed. The entire mountain was a corpse.

My father was a cruel bug, and he always had been since I was a bugling. But once the Red Queen’s mind was set to battle this invisible beast, he hid me away to protect me from her wrath. To say that this contributed to my survival is… dubious. Since the day of my birth, I feared no fire, no flame--I felt as though instead they spoke to me, whispered. There was a heat inside of my chest begging to be stoked, and I did so in private, harnessing the limits of my young half-Wyrm magic before my friends as a show. I’ve no doubt in my mind that this power I harnessed stemmed from our Mother’s roots.

When I awoke at great length following Gloamsmont’s death, I found the ruins of a once-great kingdom left cruelly and inhospitably ruined. But through the grey and black dismay, through the coating of too-cold air and too-hot ash, through the darkness that covered everything, there was still yet something that called me--something that beckoned. As old as time, hungry and tired, I waded forward. My aching body pushed its way through the hollow husk and visualized the final moments of these bugs that I’d grown up with, forever trapped under layer upon layer upon layer of masks. I can still remember how my throat burned with the dust that slipped through my own that I still wore, and passing by the vast gap in the mountain’s ceiling became a quiet blessing of clean air. _Oh, if I could only fly…._

The calling drew me away from the hole, drew me to our capital, led me to exploration. I’d never been to the capital, carved so cleanly and neatly out of the solid core of our mountain. It was obsidian, and it was hot and dusty and it blended almost too well into the darkness I waded through. Even with eyes designed for the dark, it was hard to see. I remember the sense of unease, the cold and numb terror and dread that clawed its way through my heart. My footsteps echoed the path of my ancestors, my great-great-grandfather. Their fear and their terror was a forgotten memory in our Mother’s light, the darkness shying away and giving us space while we followed her into civilization. The fear echoed in my chest, but I was starving.

When I found a scarlet flame dancing in the distance, I hastened myself. The fire’s call grew stronger as I came, and I came as swiftly as my weary limbs could move, until I was all but crawling. And the light bathed me, comforted and soothed my mind in a way that I could only dream. It shielded me from the lonely nightmares that plagued me in the days that followed.

The fire stood at the end of a long, wooden torch, suspended in the grasp of some faceless, bulbous creature. My fingers reached out toward the song it was singing, feeling the beating of my heart pulse in time to the tune, echoing louder and louder in my head--I would have cherished the flame, cradled it in my hands and used it to illuminate my path.

Had I not been starving, perhaps I would be dead.

I’d eaten fire before, you see. It flared and burned so sweetly in my chest and filled me more than any mortal food ever could. It soothed the cockles of my heart and fed my vessel with crackling heat and energy, fire and embers stolen from Father’s iron forge. Although this fire was of magical virtue, my body was starving, and my mind was weeping for relief. And so I ate it.

Although I’d experienced death and rebirth in many forms since, the first time that I died will always haunt me as a distant memory. The fire burned like no other before, flaring up at the touch of my hands. To swallow it was a struggle as it strained and struggled to grow, and the being that resided within it fought for escape. It expanded, it grew--the heat felt maddeningly temperamental, my innards felt like they were boiling. Fire dribbled from my mouth in liquefied form, pooling at my knees, but though it was painful, and though I knew my mistake, I still refused to release it--my stomach was so empty! So very, very empty and hollow…

But oh, the pain! The blinding, indescribable _pain!_ If you knew what it was like to have your blood boil, my friend, then you would have a shred of understanding for what I felt--and I’d not even wish such an experience upon you.

At some point during our battle for dominance, I keened and surrendered to death.

When we awoke, we were within darkness. An inky, black expanse of nothingness, but our feet carried us onward--lulling us to the thrall of voices, of whispers, of a glimmering heartbeat bathed in scarlet. Always and forever, watching from the depths of this mountain, watching and feeding on the doubts and uncertainties of the bugs in our domain--the dreary darkness that was accompanied by dreams of terror and astonishment and awe. Each night was a fruitful buffet, and we settled down, satiated in their quiet misery and despair each and every time we awoke for a feast. Timeless as the void, present as the shadow cast by the light--truly, this was an eternal bliss!

The light streaked across the sky with a marked crack, marring the expanse of ink. A squamous being toppled from the heavens, turning up dirt and rock in her wake. The bugs began to hope, and--

No. _No._

_Don’t you dare lose your fear. Cling to it._

_Don’t you dare worship the Wyrm, you miserable maggots._

_Don’t you dare make us starve, you lowly Wyrm._

But the Wyrm, when she stepped from the shell of her being--gazing about the crowd of her due worship as they gathered about her--only stared back at us.

And so she did.

_And so we starved._

_And so we tore everything away from this Queen, for our Heart must beat._

We gathered our patience from the depths of our celestial being, harnessing it to transform into a pure and unbridled rage that would stoke the fires of hate. We patiently awaited for a chance at opportunity, worming our way into her mind to transplant ideas of death and betrayal. We peered through her future through a sliver in her dreams, and we saw

_me, it was me!_

a harmless, little bugling curled within her womb _(womb?)_ , aching with a pitiable flame and the future heir set to secure the Wyrm’s reign. Bugling that it is, Being of Fire and Sparks, we see your betrayal and she now knows, and so she cast you away as filth and disease-- _but she didn’t kill me. Was there fondness, after all?_ \--And so she vowed that she would rule eternal, believing the lies we whispered, our presence all but forgotten.

_Forgotten, but not undone. Not yet._

Until now.

We choked on the fire, we bled, we burned, our throat was scorched and crying out for--

No, _I_ choked. _I_ burned. _I_ cried out for water, and it was _my_ throat--

It hurt, _I_ hurt _, we_ hurt _,_ burning _inside,_ burning _outside is this why bugs fear fire is this why they pop why they squirm--_

We bled, _it_ bled, _we_ fought, we raged, _it_ consumed the flames, _I_ was the flames-- _it_ was the flames-- _it was_

_The scarlet fire._

_Burn the mother, feed the child. Burn our mother, feed my child, who is the child is_ it _the child am_ I _the child what nightmare is--_

Why doesn’t it crack? _Why don’t I crack? Why won’t my shell crack?_

_Burn the mother, feed the child._

It’s so hot I should be cracking I should be bursting I am _boiling_ I am _DYING_

_Burn his mother, feed the child._

I should be _dying_ I should be _dead_ I _wish_ I was _dead_ there’s so much _heat_ and there’s so much _pressure_ let me _pop, my Mother, why must you curse me so why must you_ burn?!

You shall live again.


End file.
